I got to spend all of my time every day at work reading and editing papers about cutting-edge technical research and getting paid for it. Then I'd go home at night and turn what I learned into science fiction stories.

I wanted the feel in these books to be like an epic fantasy, with kings, queens, dukes and court politics, but of course like what I was explaining before, about making the science make sense, you have to make the politics make sense, too.

Dune is the bestselling science fiction book of all time. It's something you really need to read in your lifetime. If you're going to read The Lord of the Rings, which everyone should, then you have to read Dune, too.

We especially need imagination in science.

One of the problems we've had is that the ICT curriculum in the past has been written for a subject that is changing all the time. I think that what we should have is computer science in the future - and how it fits in to the curriculum is something we need to be talking to scientists, to experts in coding and to young people about.

We need to be pro-science we have to go back to science.

The thing that interests me least about the radio business is the radio business. But I've had to learn a little bit about it. It's not rocket science: You get ratings, that's good.

It turns out that understanding the British public is not rocket science. The British appreciate honesty and they also have a bonkers, off-the-wall sense of humour like me.

If you just have a single problem to solve, then fine, go ahead and use a neural network. But if you want to do science and understand how to choose architectures, or how to go to a new problem, you have to understand what different architectures can and cannot do.

Science is one of a handful of things that defines us as a very special species. It is amazing how far we have been able to get and how accurate our predictions are. I think understanding how the universe was born is very important. It really gives us a perspective on many things.